Standardized Testing

Since the second grade I have been required to prove all that I had learned through the CMT, the Connecticut Mastery Test. Every other year I had to sit through a week and a half of testing of about two to three hours a day. I remember how much time was spent reviewing the different components of the test and the best strategies to pass. Every year I was either trained to pass the next level of tests or spent half of the year reviewing what I had learned the previous year to ensure good test grades. I have been learning how to take tests for more than half of the 10 years that I spent in the public school system here in the U.S. However, I do not blame my teachers for teaching me to take tests. I blame the whole educational system. If the children did not perform well on tests, teachers would be reprimanded by their principals, who would be reprimanded by their superintendents, who would then be reprimanded by the state, which would finally be reprimanded by the government.

How efficient can one test be to measure all students regardless of poverty, special needs, English language skills, and many other factors that cause substantial variance in certain skills. The complexity of a child cannot be measured by one test score. I think that Bob Peterson, the editor of Rethinking Schools, said it best when he stated, "there's only one thing worse than requiring students to reduce all learning to a single 'correct' answer, and that is reducing assessment and accountability to a single standardized test."

One of the things that annoy me most about standardized testing is the fact that so much money is being used to administer standardized tests when some schools do not even have the basic necessities such as proper books. Some schools do not have enough books for all of their students and other schools have books that are significantly outdated. These problems are put aside every year because the schools have no money, but there is always enough money for standardized tests. Here's a thought, maybe students should be provided with the necessary tools to learn instead of assessing students every year and then doing nothing to change the learning situation. This is not one of those situations where "if at first you don't succeed try and try again" will be to anyones benefit. Testing students over and over again does not improve scores. Providing them with the necessary means such as books, microscopes, calculators, and the like and give them a chance to learn to their full extent. Often the children that are most negatively affected by the outcomes of standardized tests are the students in low-income areas who attend inner-city schools. These schools have the least resources and this fact does not change form year to year. Yet the school is required to raise test scores. If the same school, in the same district, with the same teachers, and the same insufficient resources do not do well on one test this year, chances are there will not be much improvement in the next year.